By now we are all aware that Newt Gingrich is the GOP's "ideas man," a mantle he bestowed upon himself, first as the Republican House Speaker of the late 1990s, and now as the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination.

It's been hard to keep up with Gingrich over the past 30+ years, as he throws out startling and grandiose plans for overhauling various elements of the federal government, outlining his ideas with a combination of professorial authority and futurist doomsday foreboding. Yet even as his 2012 rivals start to call him out for some of his crazier claims, Gingrich is sticking by his ideas, even when they contradict, or are just downright cuckoo. (He has, however, conceded that his Nancy Pelosi lovefest was a bad idea).

Gingrich's former colleagues note that the man is an ideas machine — although not all of his ideas have staying power.

"Newt has 10 ideas a day," former Republican Congressman and Gingrich Scott Klug told the WSJ last week. "Two of them are good, six are weird and two very weird."

With Gingrich looking more and more like the potential nominee, it seems like a good idea to revisit his canon of ideas about America. We've compiled a list of some of the nuttier ones — let us know in the comments section if you think we've missed anything good.